Old & New Friends Can Be A Great Resource For Marketing Ideas

Where do you get ideas for new marketing initiatives?

By keeping in touch with clients, you can identify current unmet needs and anticipate future service opportunities. And by monitoring trends that influence your market and impact your clients, you can also identify new opportunities.

Clearly these are the best sources of new ideas.

But they are not the only source.

Old Friend…New Idea

I offer two personal experiences in which new ideas originated from unexpected sources.

The first incident occurred during while reconnecting with a friend over lunch. We hadn’t seen each other in more than a year, so there was much catching up to do. After hearing about my past years’ activities, he suggested a new project for my consideration. Although we work in totally different and unrelated fields, he is a really good listener, and as a result, very insightful.

His suggestion was a really good idea.

New Acquaintance…New Idea

The second experience was quite different. I was with person I’d only met once before but with whom I had much in common. While chatting about our mutual interests, this individual, who thrives on learning and exploring new ideas, referred to a job search site and suggested that I check it out for new marketing ideas.

From a marketing perspective, we can learn two things from these experiences.

Other People Do Want To Help You

First, most people want to be helpful.

In practice, this means that almost everyone we know would like to be helpful. However, we tend to be selective about whose comments we take seriously. Just as we usually prefer the company of people who are like us, when it comes to running our business, we opt for suggestions from other people like us--other business owners.

As a result, we are inclined to screen out the insights and observations of otherwise intelligent people, simply because they have not chosen running their own businesses as a way of earning their livelihood.

Undoubtedly, we can and do learn from other owners who are walking the small business talk. But we can also learn lots of new things from other people, if we keep our minds open to their ideas and suggestion.

We Can Often Benefit From Their Help

This leads to the second lesson.

Regardless of the nature, size or location of our individual businesses, none of us can do it alone. In other words, in running our businesses, we all need the help of other people. Despite the know-it-all attitude that I occasionally encounter in business owners, including real estate agents, none of us knows everything we need to know.

Confident as we may feel that we have considered all possible new business opportunities, there will inevitably be things that we have missed. It’s usually easier leave the lens narrowly focused on the familiar than to adopt a newer, broader perspective. Our friends and family, regardless of their knowledge of our businesses, can help us apply this perspective.

In my case, one friend identified aspects of my experience and then suggested how I could beneficially apply this experience. The other person knew of a web site that had its usefulness not been pointed out, I would never have even considered.